ATTRACTING just three suitable applicants to man a new on-call fire crew in Barrow has been branded as “embarrassing but predictable” by firefighters and union leaders.

In February Cumbria County Council’s Labour-Lib Dem cabinet proposed to scrap the evening full-time cover in Ulverston between the hours of 8pm and 8am.

Under the changes, one full-time fire crew would have been be removed from Ulverston and the under-staffed resilience crew in Barrow will become an on-call crew.

This would leave just one full-time fire crew covering Barrow, Ulverston, Kendal and the Lakes - the whole of South Cumbria - the nearest being Carlisle.

In response to public backlash amid a campaign spearheaded by The Mail the council then made a U-turn.

While the full-time Ulverston crew will still only work during the day the council would reinstate the full-time night-time crew at Kendal. Previously Kendal has been on-call only during the evening.

An on-call crew will be created at Barrow and there are plans to increase the number of on-call firefighters in Ulverston from 16 to 30.

However a recruitment campaign to ideally sign up at least 12 to man the Barrow on-call crew ended with just three suitable applicants.

A shortlist of seven was reduced when one failed the fitness test, one withdrew for personal reasons and two then failed the interview.

A spokesman for Cumbria County Council said: “Since the recruitment drive, we received a number of late applications, of which two are considered high quality and will be invited to complete interview and training programme – commencing in January.

“Ahead of this, we will be doing another on-call drive (we had over 1,100 applications for full time firefighters, so hopeful there are still people out there who will apply for the on call opportunity) – aiming to recruit a further three or four.

“If the two late applications are successful, and we also successfully recruit another three in November, this will give us an on-call crew of up to 11 in Barrow from the beginning of 2019.

“Recruits would start their training courses in January.”

Eddie Burrows, secretary of the Fire Brigades Union in Cumbria, said the recruitment campaign had been “embarrassing”.

“We knew it would be difficult and we did say this would happen but we have tried to be supportive of the campaign,” he added.

Increasing the number of on-call firefighters in Ulverston has also failed.

Bosses offered the existing full-time daytime Ulverston firefighters a 7.5 per cent salary enhancement to remain on call from home. This would effectively mean the firefighters were working 24/7 - half the day at the station and the other half of the day on call.

This was knocked back and negotiations are continuing.